Do you have flashbacks or nightmares about your baby’s birth? Do avoid your baby because he/she reminds you of your traumatic experience? Are you having fantasies about hurting the baby, or yourself? Do you have difficulty concentrating? Are you unusually irritable, angry or depressed? Then you may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from your childbirth experience. But you are not alone! What you are going through is real, and there is hope for healing. Don’t give up!

Thursday, March 31, 2011

You will experience some of the wisdom of the birth community. Included in this conference will be the voices of Barbara Harper, director of Waterbirth International; Dr. Cynthia Gabriel author of The Best of Both Worlds: Natural Hospital Birth; Dr. Patrick Muffley plus April Kline MSM, on postpartum depression!

You also have your choice of preconference workshops: Waterbirth Credentialing with Barbara Harper, and Early Lactation Care Specialist Workshop with Donna Walls RN, IBCLC!

All offerings carry nursing contact hours! Register today! Early Bird Registration NOW until April 15!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Certificate Program provides training for health care practitioners, humanitarian relief workers and policy planners addressing the health and mental health sequelae of trauma.;Organized by the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and Instituto Superiore di Sanita in Orvieto, Italy. Application deadline is the 1st of July 2011. For more information. Click here http://hprt-cambridge.org/?page_id=31!

Please circulate to all your networks!Encourage others to sign up! Follow us on ...... Follow the Movement on Twitter! Our profile is available at @MGMentalHealthCheck out our Face-book-page and invite your friends to join! Register to Attend the Second GMH Summit Registration for the Second Summit of the Movement is now open. Click here for more information.This second Summit promises to be an exciting event, with sessions on scaling up for mental health, human rights and advocacy, the launch of the second Lancet series on mental health and discussions on the way forward for the Movement.We hope to see you there! Upcoming Conferences 3rd International Congress on ADHD, Berlin, Germany, 26-29 May 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

A U.S. insurance company for doctors of obstetrics and gynecology isoffering a free post-partum depression test by phone, insurance companyofficials say.

The free test, available to any U.S. new mother through her doctor, isconducted over the telephone and sends a report on a patient's session toher physician's office. The test evaluates the patient's condition, and involves the doctor in taking action for the patient, officials ofObstetricians & Gynecologists RRG of America Inc. say.

Patients can sign up their doctors, and doctors then assign the test via theWeb site: www.freeppdtest.com.

Doctors are allowed an unlimited number of free tests for theirpost-delivery patients and no advertisements are included on the Web site,company officials say.

Some states, such as New Jersey, require post-partum depression tests, butmost doctors encourage all women to have a post-partum depression test 6-18weeks after delivery.

Post-partum depression affects about one in nine or 10 women followingdelivery. Symptoms include trouble sleeping, feeling disconnected from thebaby, having scary or negative thoughts about the baby, or worrying about seriously hurting the baby, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionsays.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

...Unless you read the scientific journals on this subject, chances are you would never come across it -- because it is seldom, if ever discussed. When’s the last time someone’s childbirth education instructor told the class that if you have a traumatic delivery in which you suffer excruciating pain and have no control over the process, you’re more likely to develop PTSD? The fact is that a state-of-the-art “walking epidural” can provide complete pain relief throughout labor and delivery, and with patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA), you can control how much or how little pain medication is given into your epidural...

Online PR News – 08-March-2011 –Mineral Wells, Texas, February 11th, 2011 – For those suffering from pain, anxiety, depression or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), there is a new treatment that has been approved by the FDA and the DOD/VA. The treatment is called Alpha-Stim cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES). The new treatment is delivered using a pocket sized electronic device that uses ear clip electrodes to deliver a low level current in a precise waveform configuration of less than one milliampere directly into the brain for 20 to 60 minutes at a time. This technology offers a newer, cheaper and less invasive way to treat many people who up until now were unable to find the necessary help...

You would never hear someone say to a bride who had her wedding completely ruined… Well, at least you have a healthy marriage… Right? I mean, I have seen situations where there were car accidents, hospital visits, or God forbid rain on a wedding day… and not once would someone have the audacity to say something like that… I am kind of guessing that kind of comment would end up as fighting words.

But in the case where a mother has a scary, or emergency delivery… even when medically necessary… the first comment a lot of people come out with is… at least you have a healthy baby! Like it is come kind of consolation prize for a bad experience.

Today in childbirth we are learning that many common practices can cause complications in birth. While all do not believe this necessarily certain studies over time have shown examples. Such as labor induction increasing the risk for fetal distress and a cesarean delivery. Below is one of my favorite examples of what can happen...

London - Kirstie Allsopp has made a scathing attack on natural childbirth experts, accusing them of stigmatising women who have Caesareans.

The TV presenter, whose two sons were delivered by the procedure, claimed that she and thousands of other mothers were being made to feel a “failure”.

She criticised the National Childbirth Trust for being “reckless” in not providing enough information about C-sections in its antenatal classes, which are attended by 100,000 couples every year.

Miss Allsopp said that while pregnant she had even been advised by some natural birth advocates to “ignore” doctors’ advice and try to give birth without medical intervention.

Figures show that more than a quarter of all babies are now delivered by Caesarean, up from just 9 percent 30 years ago. The rates are far higher in more affluent areas of the country, including parts of London and the South-East - which natural birth advocates claim supports the notion that some women are now “too posh to push”...

Commonly associated with soldiers who’ve experienced unthinkable tragedies while at war, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can disrupt the lives of various people from various backgrounds. According to America’s Heroes at Work, a site from the U.S. Department of Labor, it afflicts 24 million people nationwide, eight percent of the population. PTSD can be acquired after enduring any kind of traumatic event, including war, physical abuse, a natural disaster or bad accident, and can result in symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, angry outbursts and depression. Because it’s a mental health disorder, PTSD isn’t fully understood by people with little experience dealing with it. The following common misconceptions have been disproven by mental health professionals and those who live with the disorder...

Thursday, March 3, 2011

(March 03, Ontario, Sri Lanka Guardian) PTSD is a relatively newly defined disorder with an old history and historical medical literature reveal clinical symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder dating back to the Egyptian civilization. In 1900 BC, an Egyptian physician eloquently described hysterical reactions of a patient after traumatic experience. These reports became one of the first medical textbooks ever when published in 1990 B.C. (Figley, C.R., 1993)....

TOTHE EDITOR: In the October 2010 issue of the Journal, MelanieS. Harned, Ph.D., et al. (1) reported on an important studyexamining the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD) and borderline personality disorder. This is an importantarea of inquiry, and the authors have done an admirable jobin comprehensively assessing their sample. However, the studyhas several limitations, and the conclusions are not consistentwith recent studies that were not cited.

As stated by Harned et al. (1) themselves, we want to underscorethe fact that the small size and select nature of their study(94 women) make it difficult to draw conclusions. They conductednumerous comparisons across variables without any adjustmentfor multiple comparisons. Furthermore, they have not cited recentlarge epidemiologic studies examining the association betweenPTSD, borderline personality disorder, and suicide attempts(2–4).

Harned and colleagues' conclusion that frequency, intent, andlethality of suicide attempts are the same for individuals withborderline personality disorder with and without PTSD is inconsistentwith recent work. Cougle et al. (2), using the U.S. NationalComorbidity Survey Replication data (N=5,692), demonstratedthat PTSD is associated with suicide attempts, even after adjustingfor the effects of borderline personality disorder. We extendedthese findings using the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcoholand Related Conditions (N=34,653), by showing that PTSD is associatedwith suicide attempts after adjustment for all sociodemographicfactors and axis II disorders (3). Pagura et al. (4) were thefirst to examine comorbidity of PTSD and borderline personalitydisorder in a large nationally representative sample by comparingindividuals with PTSD alone (N=1,820), borderline personalitydisorder alone (N=1290), and comorbid PTSD and borderline personalitydisorder (N=643). This study found that individuals with comorbidPTSD and borderline personality disorder had greater odds oflifetime suicide attempt compared to individuals with eithercondition alone (4).

We have shown that individuals with co-occurring PTSD and borderlinepersonality disorder have higher odds of having a suicide attemptthan either disorder alone (3, 4). These findings are in contrastto the findings of Harned and colleagues' study (1). We believethe discrepancy between the epidemiologic studies and the Harnedet al. study is due to the differences in sample size. We notethat epidemiologic studies cited above are limited by lack ofassessment of lethality of suicide attempts, a strength of Harnedand colleagues' study. We suggest that future clinical studiesneed to gather a larger sample and include a comparison groupof women with PTSD.

Footnotes

The authors report no financial relationships with commercialinterests.

BROOKSVILLE — It's not just battle-worn soldiers who come home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Just ask Michele Rosenthal. She suffered an allergic reaction to a medication at age 13 that left her entire body blistered like a burn victim. But it was the damage to her psyche that took the longest to heal.

"Fear is an emotion all of us have," said Rosenthal, 43. "It's hard to get over it. You've got to unravel it."

Now, she is taking that message on the road as a PTSD survivor and author. Speaking last week at a symposium at Pasco-Hernando Community College, she said PTSD awareness is critical to helping both individuals and their families recover from traumatic experiences.

Studies estimate that up to 70 percent of adults in the United States will go through a traumatic event in their lifetime, and up to 20 percent will struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, up to 40 percent of the military returning from Afghanistan or Iraq suffer from PTSD, Rosenthal said....

PTSD sufferers would give up an average of 13 years of life to be without the disorder -- but may not realize that some symptoms don't affect happiness

In the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, not all symptoms are created equal.

In an effort to better treat PTSD, a study published March 1 in the journal Psychiatric Services is the first to examine which problems associated with PTSD actually correspond to lower quality of life, as indicated by the patient's willingness to die sooner or to risk life-threatening treatment to relieve their symptoms.

PTSD is more costly than any other anxiety disorder. As many as 300,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan currently have PTSD, with costs for their care estimated at $4 to $6.2 billion over the next two years.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to ask actual patients with PTSD about their health preferences," said lead author Jason Doctor, associate professor of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy at the USC School of Pharmacy. "These findings identify targets for treatment that may improve quality of life among people with PTSD."

The researchers found that, of four major symptoms associated with PTSD, not all were associated with a patient's immediate quality of life, even though those who sought treatment for PTSD expressed significant overall declines in mental health.

Distressing recollections of a traumatic event and avoidance of certain activities and thoughts – both commonly conceived of as dysfunctional behaviors – had little correlation to a patient's reported sense of well-being, according to the study.

However, symptoms tied to heightened arousal – such as trouble sleeping, irritability and vigilance – were associated with lower quality of life among PTSD patients. Anxiety and depression were also associated with lower quality of life.

"We conjecture that although avoidance is an important aspect of PTSD, its effect on quality of life may be limited because it is a coping strategy. Avoidance may be a dysfunction that improves, in the short term, subjective well-being," explained Doctor, who is on the research faculty of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC.

The researchers found that, on average, a patient with PTSD was willing to give up 13.6 years of his or her life to live unburdened by the symptoms of the disorder.

On average, those with PTSD were willing to accept a treatment with up to a 13 percent chance of immediate death in order to achieve total relief of PTSD symptoms.

Lori Zoellner of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Norah Feeny of Case Western Reserve University were co-authors of the study.

The researchers interviewed 184 persons seeking treatment for PTSD at two treatment sites in different regions of the United States. The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

###

For a full-text copy of the paper or to arrange an interview, contact Suzanne Wu at suzanne.wu@usc.edu.

He and his brother suffered through years of physical violence and emotional abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father.

“He had no emotional connection but anger,” Steve said of his dad. “He had no idea how to relate to kids.”

His father was an engineer, and was a very smart man, Steve said. So when Steve came home with bad grades, his father called him stupid. He would not hesitate to beat him for this, and other reasons.

While the abuse has long passed, the effects lingered on through his life. Steve, who lives in Geneva and asked that his name be changed for this story, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. He is 67 years old now, and while he has confronted his past through therapy, as recently as last summer he’s experienced recurring bouts of anger stemming from his PTSD.

The anger manifested itself as road rage, he said. The people in his everyday life would comment about how calm he always seemed to be, and never noticed anything — but if a car cut him off on the road, he felt himself grow unnecessarily and uncontrollably angry....

SATURDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Armed with brain scans, researchers have discovered bawling babies trigger a far more muted response in the brains of depressed mothers than in mothers who aren't depressed.

Contrary to a previous theory, "it looks as though depressed mothers are not responding in a more negative way than non-depressed mothers. What we saw was really more of a lack of responding in a positive way," said study lead author Heidemarie K. Laurent in a news release from the University of Oregon.

Laurent is an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, but she worked on the study as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon.

The study, which appears online in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, is the first to examine how the brains of depressed women responded to the crying of babies.

In total, the researchers studied the brains of 22 women using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures brain activity through blood flow changes. The women were all first-time mothers with 18-month-old babies.

When the babies cried, the brains of the mothers who weren't depressed lit up in the areas connected to reward and motivation. "In this context, it was interesting to see that the non-depressed mothers were able to respond to this cry sound as a positive cue," Laurent said. "Their response was consistent with wanting to approach their infants. Depressed mothers were really lacking in that response. "

The key message from the study, the researchers noted, was that depression can have a long-lasting impact on mother-infant relationships by dampening the brain's response to a baby's emotional cues.

According to Laurent, the research -- and the levels of activity in the brain -- suggests the challenges of treating depression in mothers. "Some of these prefrontal problems may be changed more easily by addressing current symptoms," Laurent said in the release, "but there may be deeper, longer-lasting deficits at the motivational levels of the brain that will take more time to overcome."

RALEIGH, NC (February 28, 2011)  Midwife and home birth supporters fromaround the state plan to gather at the Capitol on Wednesday March 2nd at10:00 am, and march to Jones Street ending at the State LegislativeBuildings in support of licensing Certified Professional Midwives, andexpanding access to care for North Carolina families that choose midwiferycare and the home setting for birth.

"Right now a fully trained and credentialed Certified Professional Midwifewho can legally practice in Virginia,Tennessee, South Carolina and Floridais at risk for being arrested for providing the same quality care inNorth Carolina. This is not right, and makes North Carolina home birthingfamilies less safe," said Russ Fawcett,Legislative Chair for North CarolinaFriends of Midwives. "Hopefully, the North Carolina General Assemblywill recognize that the safety of NC home birthing families is at stake, andthey will pass legislation to licenseCPMs with purpose."

A Centers for Disease Control National Health Statistics report released inMarch showed a five percent increase in demand for out-of-hospital midwifebirths in 2005 across the United States. In North Carolina,homebirthsincreased by 32 percent from the 2003-2004 period to the 2005-2006 periodanalyzed. This new data increases the urgency for passing the current pendinglegislation in North Carolina to license and regulate Certified ProfessionalMidwives (CPMs).

"Now more than ever it is crucial that North Carolina's home birthingfamilies have access to trained midwives,"said Russ Fawcett, LegislativeChair for North Carolina Friends of Midwives. "Midwife attended plannedhomebirths have dramatically increased in North Carolina in the past fewyears. Each year, more North Carolina families choose out-of-hospital birthfor many reasons. These families deserve safe and affordable maternity care,and the midwives who provide it deserve legal recognition."

Currently, there are no laws in North Carolina to regulate CPMs, who deliverbabies in private homes and freestanding birth centers. Studies show thatlow-risk women who plan home births under the care of CPMshave outcomesequal to low-risk women who deliver in the hospital, but with far fewercostly and preventable interventions. A study commissioned by the Washingtonlegislature found that during the last five years alone,the state's licensedmidwives saved taxpayers and private insurers more than $10million.Consistent with the medical literature on the safety of home birthunder the care of Certified Professional Midwives, the CDC report also foundsignificantly reduced rates of pre-term and low-birth weight inout-of hospital populations. Certified Professional Midwives, who specializein promoting optimal maternal health andwho deliver the majority of U.S.babies born in private homes and freestanding birth centers, provideintensive,individualized pre-natal care that focuses on prevention and riskassessment. The authors of the report identify appropriate risk assessment asa likely factor in the reduced rates of pre-term and low-birth weight inout-of hospital settings.

North Carolina Friends of Midwives is a grassroots organization of midwifeadvocates dedicated to promoting,supporting, and protecting midwifery inNorth Carolina. North Carolina is a priority for The Big Push for MidwivesCampaign, representing tens of thousands of grassroots advocates in theUnited States who support expanding access to Certified Professional Midwivesand out-of-hospital maternity care. The mission of The Big Push for Midwivesis to educate state and national policymakers about the reduced costs andimproved outcomes associated with out-of-hospital maternity care and toadvocate for expanding access to the services of Certified ProfessionalMidwives, who are specially trained to provide it. Media inquiries aboutNorth Carolina

TUESDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) -- The increasingly commonplace decision by pregnant women and their doctors to induce labor for convenience rather than for medical necessity entails some health risks to both mother and child, research suggests.

The new report, which highlights the negative impact of what is known as "elective induction" for first-time mothers, indicates that going that route increases the chances of a Cesarean delivery, while also boosting the mother's risk for greater loss of blood and a longer post-delivery hospital stay.

"The benefits of a procedure should always outweigh the risks," study author Dr. Christopher Glantz, professor of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said in a university news release. "If there aren't any medical benefits to inducing labor, it is hard to justify doing it electively when we know it increases the risks for the mother and the baby."

Glantz and his colleagues report their findings in the February issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine.

Elective induction has for the most part become a routine aspect of obstetric care, researchers noted.

But the authors caution that the decision is not without consequences, as the process does not unfold in the same manner as natural labor.

By analyzing the medical charts of 485 women who gave birth to their first child at the University of Rochester Medical Center in 2007, investigators found that about one-third of those who elected to have labor induced had to undergo a Cesarean section compared with just one-fifth of those who were not induced.

C-sections are considered major surgery and carry the risk of infection, complications and additional surgeries.

What's more, 88 additional in-hospital days are logged for every 100 women who choose to undergo an elective induction vs. women who go into labor spontaneously, the research team found.

In addition, babies born after induced labor appeared to face a higher risk for needing oxygen following delivery and special care in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The study authors noted that women who had previously given birth might not suffer the same negative consequences.

"If you've delivered once before, your body knows the drill and can do it again," said Glantz.

Are there any other moms out there besides me up for changing Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" mantra to "Eat, Pray, Sleep"? This feels more appropriate for moms caught in the pursuit of peace and happiness, no Bali in our crystal balls, and running around like pet gerbils to make spaghetti dinners, help with homework and organize sleepovers.

I really wanted to be one of those seven million who bought Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray. Love," inhaled it as soulful medicine, and felt an inner spiritual shift at that final page. But by the end of the book (no, really by the end of Gilbert recounting her divorce) I wanted to throw it in the toilet. "Eat, Pray, Love"? You've got to be joking.

Let's be real, a mother who is feeling miserable in life isn't going to disappear for three months, eat her way alone through Italy, pray in India at an ashram and go study with a shaman in Indonesia. Most moms of Gilbert's socioeconomic status set up weekly therapy appointments with an LCSW off of their insurance plan and cry in their minivans. Three months off isn't on the menu for moms....

Before I start writing this post out, I want to take a moment to warn my readers about a story that contains graphic birth trauma. This could be a trigger for those of you who have had trauma, or bad experiences. I encourage you to read with caution.

Yesterday afternoon I caught a tweet about Birth Rape from one of the women I follow on twitter. Emily had a c-section a little over a year ago, and as time went on was not happy with her experience. While her blog is mainly about her son who is super cute, she posts some birth stuff, like the birth rape post.

We have all seen some serious doozies when it comes to birth stories on websites like Baby Center, or The Bump, but after reading this one myself, I literally cried for the mother, and wondered to myself, how is this happening in the United States? ...

In the new study, published in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature, researchers assessed 64 people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and found that symptom scores were five times higher among women with above-average PACAP levels than among women with below-average PACAP levels.

The team also found that, due to genetic variations, PTSD may be triggered by different biological pathways in women and men.

The finding that PACAP levels are an indicator of PTSD symptoms may lead to new ways to diagnose and treat PTSD and other anxiety disorders, the study authors noted.

"Few biological markers have been available for PTSD or for psychiatric diseases in general. These results give us a new window into the biology of PTSD," first author Dr. Kerry Ressler, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, said in a university news release.

A common gene variant was associated with a nearly doubled likelihood of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in at-risk urban women -- but not in otherwise similar men, researchers said.

The affected gene encodes a receptor protein believed to mediate stress responses, and is also modulated by estrogen signaling, according to Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta, reporting in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature.

Heavily traumatized civilian women with two copies of a specific single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the ADCYAP1R1 gene were more likely to show PTSD with an odds ratio of 1.66 (95% CI 1.32 to 2.09) relative to similar women without the condition, Kessler and colleagues found.

The same SNP -- called rs2267735, substituting a cytosine base for a guanine -- in men exposed to fearful situations showed no association with PTSD, the researchers also found (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.71 to 1.27).

The authors did point out, however, that women are more likely to develop PTSD than men, and this discrepancy may relate to the modulation of the receptor pathway by estrogen....

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About Me

My name is Jodi Kluchar, and I live in Struthers, Ohio. I am currently a volunteer postpartum support group coordinator in Mahoning County, and webmaster of PTSD After Childbirth: www.ptsdafterchildbirth.orgI suffered from PTSD after the birth of my son. The most important piece of advice I have for you is that it’s important to talk about what happened, even though you may not want to. Try to find a counselor or someone you trust to help you work through your memories and how you feel about the birth. Read my birth story here.